


Avenge Revenge

by worddancer



Series: Avenge Revenge [1]
Category: Avengers, Captain America, Iron Man - Fandom, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor - Fandom
Genre: Anger, Angst, Character Study, F/F, F/M, Mentions of Rape, Multi, Rule 63, everyones a woman because reasons, gender bend, gender swap, mentions of domestic violence, mentions of gender violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-25
Updated: 2017-12-25
Packaged: 2019-02-20 12:49:42
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,328
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13147059
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/worddancer/pseuds/worddancer
Summary: Antonia Stark, Natasha Romanov, Stacy Rogers, Chelsey Barton, Thor Friggasdotter, Becky Banner, their all a little broken, a little angry and sometimes that's all you need to be the heros that save the world.





	Avenge Revenge

**Author's Note:**

> I like gender swaps so I wrote one. Not super happy with Thor's part but what can you do. Hope everyone enjoys and fair warning its a bit dark.
> 
> TRIGGERS- Mentions/allusions to rape/non con, mentions of abuse, mentions of violence. Nothing is really shown "on screen" but as the rear of rape and violence is something very integral to being a woman in american society it is discussed.

Despite what they showed in the spy movies dying hair took a set amount of time. You had to be far enough ahead of whoever you were running from to stop, take time to evenly spread the color through your roots and your hair, time to let the dye sink in and change your appearance, time to wash it out and let the excess flow down the drain. A sloppy dye job stood out like a red painted target. 

Change took time no matter how small a change it was.

Natasha remembered being Natalia, being in the Red Room, turning 17 and being sent out on her first solo mission. They dyed her hair blonde. They dyed her pubic hair too. 

“The curtains need to match the drapes.” said Katya, the wardrobe manager, in a snide American accent. 

Her target was an American oilman who liked his girls young. 15 years old young. The Red Room had restricted her food for two weeks to make her look even younger. She didn’t know what he had done to offend Mother Russia but she was told he needed to die. If he died, she’d be good and get a reward. If he didn’t she’d be punished. 

In the Red Room if you were punished enough times you were canceled. 

Natalia wouldn’t be the one who never came back. 

Natalia used to have another name. That girl walked into a stone room on the promise of a full belly and never came back. 

Natalia survived. 

Before Natalia became Natasha there was running, there was fear, there was the expectation that she wouldn’t come back this time.

Natalia who wasn’t quite Natalia but not quite someone new didn’t care. 

It turns out weapons can grow tired of being fired. 

When she ran she got far enough ahead to change her appearance. It was one of the first skills taught in the Red Room. You are who we say you are, who you are is always up to us. Who you are is in direct service to the Red Room. Who you are has a shelf life and is expendable. 

She ran on a mission in Sweden. She look at the land of blonde hair and blue eyes and bought red dye at the drug store with cash she lifted from a wallet three cities away. 

There is a difference between running and hiding. 

Locked in an expensive hotel room she set the dye on the counter. Put on the gloves and began to carefully and evenly apply the color to her hair. Section by section color exploded on her scalp. Wet the dye looked like blood. 

Thirty minutes later in the shower the dye still looked like blood flowing from her hair down her body. 

It looked like period blood, dark red and oxygenated. 

She’d had a period for three years before they ripped her uterus out. 

Graduation they called it. 

She remembered the first time she bled from between her legs. It fascinated her, bleeding without a wound. It the short, quick, frigid showers they were allowed she stared at the blood running down her legs. Her eyes locked on to the clots that flowed from inside of her. Look, it bleeds, it’s human. 

At fifteen she already knew how to seduce, to break free of a captor, to kill. At fifteen she already wondered if she was human anymore, or a spider, or a machine, or something else all together.

She bled before of course but that was in service to Mother Russia, to the KGB, to who ever had their hand on the trigger of scared girls trying to survive. 

Bleeding for survival is different than bleeding as a side effect from being alive. 

Hair dye if it splatters begins to dry. Red hair dye looks like blood clots on the shower wall. 

Blood means you either are alive or were at one point.

Natalia thinks she might be somewhere in between a machine and the broken girl who first walked into the stone room. 

But at one point she was the hungry girl who knew going with the man meant something bad but hopefully bad had a warm meal attached. 

At one point she was a machine. 

She isn’t sure who she wants to be now but maybe she can figure it out. Until then there’s always someone willing to pay for someone with her skills.

Weapons aren’t meant to sit on the shelves.

Stacy Rodgers hated bullies. She hated the men who made her mother afraid on her walk home from the late shift at the hospital. She hated the boys that cornered the girls in the alleys and she hated the fathers who caused the bruises on the women at church who pinched her cheeks and looked at her mother sadly. 

She didn’t hate Howard Stark who wanted to prove her could turn anything into a weapon- even a half dead sickly girl. She didn’t hate Erskine who was just a little too clean shaven and had a little too much hair for a male scientist in his 50’s for all he was slim and wore clothes just a touch too big. 

She understood them. They wanted to prove something to the world, so did she. Her best friend was on the front lines and goddamnit she was going to do her best to join him one way or another. Sometimes reasons didn’t matter if the end goal was good enough, build a weapon, show the world something, fight one more bully. 

They made her a chorus girl. She was bigger now, taller, stronger, but her muscles were still slim and attractive and it didn’t hurt her non existent bust grew three sizes either. It didn’t help that she was pretty now. 

She hadn’t been pretty before. She’d been all ribs and elbows and a bad cold away from a six foot hole in the ground.

She punched the first man who tried to grab her ass during a photo shoot through a wall. 

Every bond you buy is a bullet in your best guys gun. Every bond you buy keeps your sweetheart safe. 

Ms. America is asking you. 

But she was finally overseas. She was finally close to the lines. And Bucky was gone, captured. And they weren’t sending a rescue team. 

Well she had her own. A few girls in the chorus were a bit more than they appeared. They all were really. They all had their stories whispered in the night, quietly, away from the ears of their chaperones. 

Mary was running from something she only talked about at three in the morning after they finished drinking stolen whiskey. Anne Marie had a baby her brother and his wife were raising three states away. Akiyo had a locket with pictures of a family locked in a camp far away. Cora’s light/dark skin told the story of a father she never knew and her mother could never forget. 

The SSR wasn’t going to send Howard’s latest science experiment out in the world without watching eyes. Men never looked to see strength in the legs they lusted after. 

It’s easy to go when no one even thinks it’s possible you’ll leave. 

They steal a truck and are half way down the road before Peggy and Howard catch them and offer them a plane ride. 

Stacy thinks she might love Peggy Carter if she can stop worrying about Bucky Barnes long enough to untangle that web. 

“I’m not letting my greatest creation launch a rescue mission in a half broken down truck.” Howard says. 

Stacy doesn’t know if she likes being thought of as his creation but she supposes on some level she is. Her lungs can breathe and not choke on the air and her muscles don’t give out on her. She can see in color and hear out of both ears and hasn’t fainted since she stepped out of Howard’s machine. 

She’s still the girl from Brooklyn who hated bullies but Howard Stark made the packaging. 

In this world the latter counts for more than the former. 

Still she found her best friend, the one who stood up with the half dead sick girl- not for her, with her.

There’s a difference. 

She found him and several other men who didn’t balk at letting a group of five women lead and rescue them. It doesn’t matter what a rescue looks like sometimes as long as you survive. 

Whatever survival means. 

Sometimes survival means living long enough to watch your best friend fall from a train you put him on. Sometimes it means realizing you’re never going to find out if the pretty girl could really forever-love you too. Sometimes it means putting a plane into frozen water and letting the ice seep into your bones. Sometimes it means wondering if it isn’t maybe a good thing Howard Stark’s greatest weapon dies as the war ends. 

Sometimes it’s having your last thought be remembering the half dead sick girl you used to be and missing her. 

There was a well crafted, well placed rumor that Stacy and Bucky were sweethearts. A woman who loved her man so much she ran across the world to find him. A secret wedding. No one could know that Ms. America was a dyke who sometimes kissed her best friend when drunk. No one could know that the sniper of the Howling Commando’s liked a little bit of everything. No one could know that the future director of SHIELD found herself gasping between the two on several occasions in a quiet tent. There’s secrets in war and sometimes the secret is love can be found on the front lines but sometimes it's between two men, two women, a group of three, a white woman and an asian man or any other unacceptable combination. 

Sometimes survival is letting something new sink into the damn ocean before it has the chance to grow.

Chelsey Barton was used to people staring at her. The Amazing Hawkeye! Look at her shoot deadly weapons with a tiny skirt and deadly smile! Look at the pretty girl and her amazing tricks!

Still a few broken noses and a few broken cheek bones from fights behind the tent when the damn rubes tried to grab her or the tightrope walkers and suddenly her pretty face wasn’t so pretty.

Trick shooting was always a good circus gig but if you were a girl you had to be pretty and look good doing it. 

The ringmaster said she had a few weeks to figure out another act or move on. 

Barney said he had a good score and they could use her gymnastics skills. 

She told them both to fuck off and walked away. She was tired of people only wanting her for one of her skill sets. 

She learned damn quick in this world that’s all someone wants. You just have to choose who to get in bed with. Military seemed like a good idea as any. Why not, she had a deadly aim with anything and there’s always a business for that. 

Turns out the army doesn’t like female snipers no matter how pretty they were or weren’t. 

Turns out a one eyed woman name Nicole Fury doesn’t give a flying fuck and just so happens to have a secret organization that’s hiring good shots with excellent make up skills. 

Her first kill is a human trafficker and she doesn’t blink as he bleeds out from an arrow to the gut. Like it or not she wanted to make him hurt, make him suffer. She wanted him to see her as she slit his goddamn throat. She knew what Nikki was doing, giving her easy kills. No moral grey area. This man lives and more girls and kids are raped and sold. More kids have choices stripped from their fingers. One dead man, a hundred plus lives saved. She knew as time went on the line would be less and less clear.

As she watched the piece of scum at her feet bleed out she really couldn’t give a damn. 

She wondered what that made her. She remembered rubes trying to grab her tiny skirt and the tightrope walkers parasol. She decided she didn’t care what she became.  
Years later when Tash gave her the single to get out and get out quick seconds before her team turned on her in the middle of Columbia she wondered when killing former teammates became easy. 

She was relieved when a mile in to her hike out of the jungle she started to vomit, the blank stares of people she thought were friends but were in truth fucking nazis staring back at her in her mind. 

It wasn’t easy to kill friends yet. 

Yet. 

Chelsey remembered being closer to thirty than the fifty she was edging toward now and seeing a girl with red in her hair and death in her eyes. Former Red Room, a very expensive gun for hire, beautiful and already looking to complete a death wish. From the information they had she was in her twenties, 14 years younger than Chelsey herself. 

“I’m making a call Phil.” Chelsey said into her comm. She took out the ear bud and smashed it under her foot. 

“Wanna get coffee? I got an idea you might like. We can always do our best to kill each other after.” 

Natalia was like a feral cat, Chelsey knew how to take care of feral animals. She grew up in the circus until she wasn’t useful to them anymore. She found a spot in SHIELD and knew too many secrets to ever be useless to them. Nikki gave her enough rope it tasted like freedom and Phil was a good man in a dirty business. 

There was always room for one more stray. 

Antonia Stark lost her virginity blackout drunk at a frat party when she was fifteen and desperate to prove that she was more than Howard Stark’s daughter. A shiny toy on the shelf to be taken down in front of company and asked to perform tricks. 

She built her first robot at age 5 and painted it red. 

Red was a color that got noticed. Red was the color of her mother's favorite lipstick. Red was one of the colors on Ms. America’s shield that her daddy hung in the living room of the mansion. Back when Howard Stark was still Daddy. 

Howard Stark was too busy looking for a ghost to notice the little robot that followed his daughter at her feet. Howard never bothered to look at little Toni unless it was to tell stories of the woman he made who became a war hero. 

“God she could fight, she’d hit you too if she had a reason. She was a hero. Damn SSR boys couldn’t see it until she made them. She was my greatest creation.” Howard would say after his third drink. 

When Toni was little she loved hearing about Ms. America, if daddy made one hero maybe he could make another one in her. 

When Toni Stark was 7 years old she was shipped off to boarding school with nothing but her bags and a hug from the butler who should have been her father. Maria was off at some charity gala, or rehab, or something. Howard was three floors down, second door on the left, in the lab that she was never allowed in. He was building more weapons. If he couldn’t find his damn Ms. America, his perfect weapon, he was going to build something more deadly. Something more beautiful.

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder and to Starks the bigger the boom the more beautiful the destruction is. 

Antonia made the headlines of the papers for the first time when she was 14. Not for graduating an elite boarding school, not for being the youngest person to ever get accepted into MIT, not for anything she’s built or created. She’s in the paper because she got drunk after her daddy couldn’t tear himself out of his lab to watch her graduate. Mommy was in another spiritual retreat- rehab- and the only person who came was the butler who loved her and his wife. The papers showed a picture someone had taken and sold. Stark heir with mascara down her eyes and eyeshadow smeared. Her lipstick was long gone and only a line around the edge showed she’d been wearing any at all. 

The headline wondered how her makeup got that way. What or who she could have been doing.

In the morning she woke up hungover, puked and slowly washed the make up Anna Jarvis had carefully applied before her ceremony off her face and cried. Once she was done she picked up the brushes and carefully recreated the simple look. But the papers had the story- the Stark girl, wild and crazy, could this be who’s inheriting Stark Industries. What could her father think?

 

Her father didn’t even bother writing and they didn’t allow newspapers in rehab. 

Give them what they want.

She gave them everything, the news papers. She gave them wild parties, cocain of a hookers ass, threesomes, foursomes, orgies, dating boys, dating girls, dating both at the same time.

She kissed Rodney once after he pulled her head out of another toilet. She was too fucked up to care there was vomit on her breath. She just wanted to give the one person who never asked her for anything but her friendship something that everyone wanted from her. 

He pushed her head away and tucked her into bed. He stayed with her until morning when she didn’t remember her puke stained lips seeking his. 

She kissed him once sober on her graduation. He kissed her back. 

Nothing more ever happened. Maybe in another world, one where she was a little less broken it could have happened. But in this world, with these scars, she was smart enough to know not to ruin the one good thing in her life. 

Toni remembered being sent to boarding school when she was seven years old after her little red robot named FIDO (Friend In Dad’s Office) was thrown at her head for daring to disturb Howard Stark from his search for Ms. America. Always Ms. America- never Stacy Rodgers. 

Howard swore he could turn anything into a weapon. Maria was too busy to see he was turning their daughter into one before their eyes. 

When Pepper didn’t run screaming after the first few weeks Toni promised herself she wouldn’t ruin the second good thing in her life either. She stopped trying to fuck her assistant and did her best to be slightly less of an ass, slightly more sober at company meetings and slightly better at having JARVIS remind her of birthdays.

Merchant of Death they called her and she didn’t give a flying fuck. She was Howard Starks daughter and she was going to build the biggest boom in the world. Until everyone forgot that Howard Stark once made Ms. America in a machine. Until she was the only thing Howard Stark made. 

Until she was trapped in a cave in the middle of the fucking desert with nothing but spare parts keeping her mostly alive. Her weapons tried to kill her and isn’t it fucked up that it took her almost dying to stare in the face of her legacy.

Her’s not Howards.

Give them what they want, a cruel smile, a drunken debauchery, a good headline, perfect lipstick no matter who or what she’d just had in her mouth. 

They stripped away every single damn piece of armour she had, booze, lipstick, her beauty because beauty can be a weapon too and told her to make a weapon. 

She built a suit, made another explosion, vowed revenge, was rescued and blew up her company. 

She’s done being Howard’s legacy, his puppet years after his death.

She lost so many pieces of herself in that cave she didn’t know where to pick them up but she could make sure her weapons don’t kill anymore. She built a better suit and one by one blew up every damn missile she ever built. She goes into clean energy. She goes into saving the world instead of killing it.

Any more killing with her name is going to be done by her hands alone. She’s done with hiding behind her company. She knows the blood on her hands and damnit she’s going to be the only one to shed it. 

Her legacy. Hers alone. 

Obie was a shock. 

He shouldn’t have been but he was. 

Just another person who saw her and decided she could be used. A piece of metal in her chest trying to kill her from inside and a person she saw as her friend trying to kill her outside. 

But she’s Antonia Maria Fucking Stark and she always survives. 

She’s just not sure what’s left after the explosion. 

She’s not sure she cares either. She’s Antonia Maria Fucking Stark, her lipstick is always red, always perfect. She was the Merchant of Death and there’s been blood on her hands since she invented her first drone at 16. She started selling off bits of her soul so long ago that she might not be able to find redemption but revenge sounds just as fucking good. 

Becky Banner watched her mother take beatings meant for her for years. She watched her brilliant, decorated father turn into a monster the minute the front door closed. A lot can be hidden behind closed doors. Especially when you homeschool your daughter because she’s just too smart to be exposed to other people's children. 

Not smart enough to make Father happy. No, never smart enough for that. She’s been tainted by her mother's idiocracy. 

There’s a reason the gamma radiation latched onto her anger. By that point that’s all she has left. Anger. It lives in the pits of her stomach and she’s afraid of it. Afraid it will make her like her father. 

Isn’t it funny how men seem to take all credit for creation and destruction? 

Her mother couldn’t give her anything her father said. Her mother would only ruin her more. He had to destroy her mother to save her. He created her. He would keep creating her. 

No wonder there was only anger at her core. 

Anger and self hate did more damage than the radiation ever did, the radiation just brought it all to the surface. Made her a monster outside and inside. The gamma radiation took every dirty secret she ever had and threw into the front line. 

Betty’s father wanted her dead. If he couldn’t have her he’d kill her instead. Even as the Hulk she remembered the looks he gave her when she came over to study with Betty. She knew what it meant when men’s eyes stayed on women too long. Every woman did. She felt the anger flare up in the pit of her stomach every time he looked at her. 

The Hulk was anger, and regret, and every dirty emotion Becky had ever had and sometimes it felt good to let her out. It felt good to smash, to attack, to lay waste to everything. But eventually the Hulk went away and Becky was left to deal with the aftermath. 

So she ran. 

She wasn’t a medical doctor but she knew enough to be useful. She hid in India, where people accepted her help and didn't ask why she was running. They paid her in food, in language lessons, in shelter, in keeping her a secret. 

Her father could never control his anger. 

Her mother never let hers out.

What made Becky able to control hers? 

Better to run. 

Thor was the princess who was supposed to be a prince. A heir because there was no spare. Not even her brother. She was the greatest warrior of Asgard, her and the Warriors Three and Sif. She was supposed to be the male prince and she never forgot. How could she when her name was that of the son she should have been. She tried her best to be the son her father wanted and was exiled for her arrogance. Her cruelness. Her callousness. 

She met an astrophysicist with stars in her eyes. She met a woman who called herself an assistant but ruled the lab as her father ruled his court but quieter. She met a man who took on the role of teacher, of father in a way her own never had. She had a hammer she couldn’t lift and something called an ID with her face but not her name. 

Lina Odinson the name stared back at her. 

“Short for Thumbelina, she was tiny and born in a flower and you’re huge and born in the stars. It’s funny.” Darcy insisted. 

Odinson. The name she should have bore. Maybe if she’d been a boy she wouldn’t have been exiled. 

She would have been, growing up is something you have to do if your a prince or a princess. The road might be different but there’s still a few universal lessons to learn. She faced her brother who loved and resented her. She faced monsters and stood with her warriors and her new friends with no battle training. She vowed to return to the scientist and to protect the world who showed her humility.

These are the ones who came together to avenge the world. Avenge, revenge, create, destroy, protect, defend. 

A good man died and they came together to make the body count as small as possible. All their jagged and broken edges manipulated by a one eyed woman into creating something that might be worth saving. 

America’s heros were broken, messy and angry. They were there out of anger, spite, hurt, loyalty and a sense of there’s nothing else to lose. 

They were there to Avenge.


End file.
